‘This is a Canadian thing’: Almost 20 years later, Axworthy’s not done with the Ottawa Treaty

It is a big night in Toronto for the Canadian Landmine Foundation. At the recently facelifted, true to its Art Deco design roots, Bloor Hot Docs Cinema, the organization is presenting “The Damage Done: An Unflinching Look at the Tragedy of Landmines.”

On the Foundation’s board sits a man who two decade’s ago launched a Canadian bid to bring an end to that tragedy: Lloyd Axworthy.

In 1996, Axworthy was the minister of foreign affairs in Jean Chrétien’s government. If the Ottawa Process that he launched that year was not his baby, he was at the very least a highly attentive midwife. Almost twenty years later, he’s still on the case. Axworthy will be front and centre at the screening and sit on a panel to explore the crisis that continues to plague more innocent people than combatants.

Axworthy and I meet at a busy Bloor Street café, just a few doors down from the cinema that will soon welcome the evening’s audience. We are joined by Christine Yankou, another board member with the foundation. While she is in line waiting for a green tea, Axworthy and I circle back to 1996.

You had the support of millions of people. It was quite the movement.

It was. That was perhaps one of the most important landmines results…it brought together large civilian ordinary people kind of involvement, with a couple of key governments and some international organizations. They all came together to make it work. It wasn’t the classic big power, ‘we’re going to run the show’. We basically went outside the system.

There were different names floating around for the Treaty. Some people called it the People’s Treaty because of the sheer amount of people behind it.

It was an interesting experience. One of the things that we did in 1996, we said everybody’s equal at the table. If you were an engineer, you had as much a right to talk and make your case as a Foreign minister or a Defense minister. So the whole idea of equality of stature…it really worked. We worked collaboratively.

Yankou returns with a mint tea made of large fresh herbs swimming in hot water.

This is mint tea, not green.

Wow, look at this. When I asked for green tea…are we growing it? Am I going to be arrested for drinking it?

He laughs. We continue.

Around that time, there was a big international movement pushing to clear the world of landmines. Celebrities got on board, even royalty. I think we all remember the Princess of Wales in her khakis, protective gear and visor walking close to a landmine field. That was momentous. She helped raise awareness.

To be fair, the initial leadership really came from Americans. Clinton, just after his election, got up at the UN General Assembly [in 1994] and gave his speech saying we have to ban landmines. And the veterans for Vietnam, they were the ones who really paid for the establishment of the international coalition. More Vietnam Vets were injured by casualties involving landmines than other weapons. Bobby Muller was the head of it. They were the big pressure group inside the States.

The Americans have had an interesting history all along. They are backers without being able to get the politics in Washington to move.

Where do they stand now?

Obama said last fall that the United States will adhere to every single criteria in the Treaty, except the Korean demilitarized zone. Americans are by far the largest donors. They are in the hundreds of millions of dollars a year in donations, in landmine removal and assistance…

Canada has fallen out of that. We’re at 6 million dollars which is humiliating.

As the years have gone by, with so many countries declaring themselves landmine free, it doesn’t mean the problem is going away. It has changed shape and moved on to…

Other places.

What’s happening now?

There are definitive changes. The casualty rate has dropped…so, there is a substantial saving of lives…the big tragedy of a landmine is that it doesn’t go away when the war stops. It hangs out there. It is in the ground. People don’t see it. You can’t go onto your farmland and you can’t stray off the pathway to the water pump…you feel captive. It is a huge deterrent for development in a lot of countries because some 15 to 20 percent of arable land still has landmines in it.

Currently, Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq has had a very major surge of landmine development. It is going to be an incredible, gigantic task to remove them.

So, while some countries are removing them and clearing their land, are landmines still being developed and produced?

Not so much being produced, there is so much on the black market. That is one reason why Canada really put a strong focus on the elimination of stockpiles. If you get rid of them, you can’t sell them. But, there is still a lot of trade going on…by no means is the threat risk over, it is just taking different forms…a lot of them are picked up by these nasty extremist groups. And, they use them to kill civilians.

Your involvement…we’re looking at almost 20 years.

Twenty years next year.

This is an issue you are staying with and trying to fight. What else would you like to see done?

Looking back…on December 3rd [1997] 122 countries showed up to sign the Treaty. Otherwise, I would have been looking for a new job. It is now over 162. There has been some real progress.

The Canadian Government has walked away from any commitment, any involvement. They pulled the funding out of the Canadian Landmine Foundation. They are no longer funding major stockpile reductions. Strangely, they’ve stopped giving international aid money to Afghanistan for landmines, their own war.

What I think is a really exciting development which can, under the right kind of political management, really re-ignite a strong commitment on the landmine issue is the new technology. Whereas before it was primitive, you know, dogs smelling fields or people walking around with a knitting needle to probe for the mines. Now we’re developing surveillance technology, we can start mapping where the mines are, we can use sonar radar sensors, we can use robots to go and extract the mines so we’re not risking life and limb to do it. Demining then becomes be safer, cheaper, more available. That in itself can be more incentive for a lot of countries.

If you can complete this sentence for me, I won’t stop until…

Until my son’s generation takes over. There is a huge opportunity for all those young Canadians who really want to do something to pick it up and finish the job for us. We got it started…but, now there’s a whole new set of thoughts, propositions and technologies.

This is a Canadian thing. Taking the risk and bringing a country together…let’s finish the job, let’s get these things out of the ground.

Moments later, at the pre-screening reception on the second floor of the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema, Axworthy is surrounded by supporters, from political and film circles: Sally Armstrong, Arlene Perly-Rae, John English, Connie Hitzeroth and Bonnie Patterson. And, with Roberta Bondar attending, there are more than a few Order of Canada pins circulating the intimate gathering. One by one, they grab some air time with Axworthy before the screening. Meanwhile, inside the theatre, the seats begin to fill with that next generation of young Canadians he is hoping to reach.